James Maa’s Productivity Hacking Guide

Intro

So finals week is coming up, and everyone is looking for ways to be more productive in this time crunch. So I thought I could help people figure out how to make their lives more efficient and productive. People have seen my productivity hacks and they have told me I’m crazy, OCD, a workaholic, super asian, etc. I take those adjectives as a compliment and I become flattered because I never thought myself as quite that.

You see, I used to be a aimless and lazy chump. I got by day-by-day using my high school planner, writing due dates and just doing things the night before. I’m not quite sure how I spent my time or where it had gone, but it’s gone. I got by the bare-minimums. “Just do enough” was probably my life model.

I’m not quite sure what prompted me to change but I can tell you, it didn’t happen all at in an instance. I couldn’t trace the genesis of my change to any major family trauma or inspirational mentor. It started out with small things. I started out with using post it notes to write to-do lists every day. Then I thought it was pretty cool. So then I added a calendar for appointments and special events. Then I started trying out more and more productivity hacks and reading more about productivity and now I’ve built up a whole repertoire of tools and skills to help me stay motivated, productive, and sane.

My friends want to know how I do what I do. They ask me how much time I spend doing these productive things. I spend about 3 to 5 hours a week planning and preparing, but it has lead me to much higher returns. They want to know what keeps me motivated, what keeps me sane. They want to see how I tick, and I’d be happy to share.

The Productivity Hacking Guide is broken down into three major components or objectives: staying motivated, being efficient, and staying sane, all of which are equally important to the end goals of being productive. This guide isn’t meant for just dead week and finals week, this guide could be applicable all across life. Keep up these good habits, and you’ll be off to your own great things as well. You don’t have to follow this guide all the way through. Take it step by step if you find it too much. Feel free to ignore some portions if you believe you have those under control (although there’s always room for improvements). Feedback is also greatly appreciate so send me a line or drop a tip! :)

Objectives

Motivation: Motivation is important. How will you do great things if you can’t motivate yourself to do those things? Goals will help keep you motivated. Study after study shows that people who regularly set goals do significantly better than people who don’t. And other studies show that the biggest factor in determining a person’s success is by their determination.

Efficiency: You only 168 hours a week, and you’re life’s already a quarter way over. How are you going to spend that time? How can you maximize your time and leverage these 168 hours so that you live the best life you possibly can? Planning out your time and recording what you have done will help you structure your time and help you identify areas where you can improve on.

Sanity: You don’t want to burn out, that’s the last thing you want to do before finals week. But if you’re spending your waking hours studying your Chemistry book or doing Linear Algebra problem sets, then you might be burning out your sanity candle way earlier than you intended. How do you stay sane after being so god damn efficient?

Great! Let’s start!

Part 1: Motivation

There are two majors ways I stay motivated: having goals that increase my supply of will power, and designing a lifestyle that leverages the most amount of self-control.

Goals

Always have big goals. Take a piece of paper out, write down anywhere from 5-10 overreaching goals in your life. If you need inspiration, you can check out mine. Goals are important because they are the lifeline of your motivation. If you want to keep yourself motivated by the end of the week, you should have these goals and write them down. They will motivate you. It could be anything, but it has to be genuine and part of you. It could be “Open a Children’s Hospital” or “Cure AIDS.” Point is that is they have to be your goals, not your parents’ or your friends’ or your girlfriend’s (although making them happy could be a goal of yours). Think long and hard about what your values, beliefs, and goals are.

Once you have this down, you’re all set up! Top goals are done, but those seem so far away! Isn’t it a bit saddening knowing the long journey you have to travel to get to where you want to be? Well that’s why we won’t write just 1 Post-It note a day, we’ll write 2! So it’s a new morning day and you just woken up, wtf do you do with your day? Well, that’s just what your second Post-It note is for. Looking at your top goals post-it, write down things you have to do for the day. It’s your very own to-do list. You have to write one every day to stay focused. It takes 10 minutes a day to plan out what you want to accomplish.

Write down all the things you have to do for the day followed by an estimation of how much time it takes. For instance “Study Math 1A — 1Hr” or “Plan Telebears Phase – 2hr.” Try to put a small upper bound on the time commitment to these tasks so you know that you will be able to complete these tasks before the allotted time. After you listed out all the tasks you have to do, calculate the total commitment of work you have for the day. Stick this Post-it (and your top goals Post it) somewhere visible like your laptop or planner.

If you would like more structure, then you are welcomed to write weekly or monthly goals. Sometimes they help you structure your life road map better. I used to do it for fun. I would have “themed weeks” where I spent around 10-15 hours a week focusing on a different theme like “Cooking” or “Breakdancing.” Sometimes it helps to do them because habits can form during those times and in all honesty it really makes life a lot more interesting when you plan variety into it. But they work professionally as well. Right now I write a weekly post it that outlines the amount of work I have to do for the week. If you’re expecting Math homework to be due every week, then you should write something like “Math Hw — 5Hr.” That way, when I run a bit dry on things to do for my day, I can look up the overarching weekly goals and put in time in those goals.

When you write weekly or monthly goals, you should write SMART goals. SMART goals stand for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely, goals. Follow these guidelines to staying on track when you write daily, weekly, and monthly goals.

I would like to spend a paragraph addressing goals and the motivation behind it. Did you know the biggest factor in determining whether a person will be successful is by how determined or hardworking they are? It’s true. Yet, most people wait for determination to come to them. As if waiting for some motivational cupid to shoot an arrow that sparks a passion so fiery that they work to their heart’s last heartbeat. It’s not coming, you have to initiate it. Determination, motivation, and inevitably self control are muscles in your body. You have to work on it, and the more you work on it, the stronger it gets. You break it down so it builds back up. It’s certainly been true for me. I always thought myself as lazy, but when I decided to start creating habits of motivation, things began to change for me. I stuck through the demotivational parts where I tried my best to exercise self control and persistence, and I think I can begin seeing its effects on me. Trust me, the more you do this motivational stuff, the more motivated you will be, don’t give up! That’s what the top goals and powerful moments are for, it’s a quick pick-me-up if you’re ever feeling down.

Yay! Now we’re done with goals!

Leveraging Willpower

When my friends tell me they have a hard time staying motivated, they usually say that they aren’t motivated enough. “How do I become more motivated like you?” I usually tell them, “you’re barking up the wrong tree pal, I am no more motivated nor driven than you are.” Most people misattribute their unproductive behaviors to the lack of motivation instead of what’s really going on: a poor use of will power. You see, self-control is a finite process. There are many psychology research that demonstrate this effect. Will power is finite, and no amount of goals will make you have infinite will power. I estimate that the amount of possible will power you can gain from all the motivational speeches, Pinterest quotes, sob stories, and upbeat friends is 10-15% your normal baseline, max. That 10-15% will translate to 10-15% more work, possibly. However, if you use your will power wisely, you can spend 50-90% less will power doing the exact same things, producing up to 2 times to 10 times your normal output.

What are we to make of this fact? The best answer I can give is to limit the spending of your will power. It is important to identify moments in which you have to make a decision on where to “spend” your will power. Some will power purchases will yield high returns and some will just be wasted will power with no returns.

Here’s an example: Say you’re in your room trying to do homework, and your roommate is playing your favorite game, Neopets. What would be a better “purchase” of willpower, spending 10 units (arbitrary units) of will power every half hour to ignore your friend constant shouting, or to spend 5 units leaving the room into a more quiet place? The answer should be obvious, you’d have to go against yourself to stay productive if you stayed in the room.

When you think about will power as finite, you’ll start noticing alternative ways to be “frugal” with your self-control. If have a hard to avoiding sweets, then spend 10 units of will power not purchasing sweets at the grocery store so you won’t be spending 5 units of will power a day trying to ignore the candy on your kitchen shelf. If you think you go on distracting websites too often, spend 5 units of will power installing a website blocker instead of trying to constantly ignore distracting content.

Distract yourself from temptations. Take the marshmallow test for example. Children who performed the best in the test (avoided eating the marshmallow the longest) were not self-righteous kids with a Gandhi-like drive to be the best they could be. Nope, they were smart about inefficiently using their willpower. They distracted themselves, looked away, closed their eyes, counted to 100, moved the marshmallow away. Only those who continued staring at the marshmallow, prodded it, and those who vowed to overcome the willpower obstacle were the ones who failed the test. So take the marshmallow test as a lesson on how you should be “spending” your will power.

If you want to study, don’t stay at home, go to the library. If you need to get work done on a weekend, gather a group of friends to study together. Make the initial will power to put yourself in a position where you no longer have to make decisions.

Planning Your Day (And Life!)

If you don’t use Google Calendar, start using it now (Or some form of online calendaring)! If you don’t know how you spend your time, then you won’t know where you’re wasting time and where you can gain a couple of extra hours. So here’s what you’re going to do: make a schedule! Since it’s already finals week and we’re beginning a new semester soon, I’ll just let you guys plan your schedules week by week, but usually for normal weeks I have a recurring event that is basically the skeleton to my week. Here’s basically what mine looks like (but with gaps where classes were supposed to be):

I actually recently switched to Sunrise

I shall preemptively guess your thoughts:

Wow! It’s so filled up!

Wow! It’s so colorful!

James! You’re crazy!

Yes. Let’s talk a little more about this. You’re going to make several calendars. I personally have 11 calendars, but you should at the very least have:

Food, Shower, and Transportation (Bare necessities)(Pink): Hygiene, walking (not a legal form of exercise), getting ready in the morning

Break or Screw Around (Yellow): Minimize these or keep them to around 5-10 hours a week.

Exercise (Teal)

School (Red) — Anything school related, including homework and studying (or you could make separate calendars)

Social (Orange)–Anything that involves developing relationships with other people. Social is actually an important calendar that is not meant to be minimized. I try to keep it around 5-10 hours a week. It keeps you mentally and spiritually healthy. Screwing around with your existing friends don’t count because there’s not much social development. This is where “convenience” friends come into play. If you’re only around certain friends because they’re convenient and accessible to you, but you don’t particularly enjoy your time with, they are convenience friends. I don’t count them in social, I put them in Break.

I would have more calendars to keep track of how much time I’m spending on each particular goal. For reference, my other calendars are:

Blogging (Gray)

Programming (Purple)

Startup (Blue)

Outside Education (Brown): I’m learning to play guitar and sing here. Audiobooks and outside reading goes here as well

Office Hours (Neon Purple; not shown): I keep track of my Teaching Assistant’s Office Hours when I need to visit them (or I do my homework at office hours so help is immediately accessible)

First things first when it comes to planning your week is NOT to fill it up with all your school work and things to do. You HAVE TO start with sleep, basic necessities, and break (yes, break). Why? If you have read The Now Habit (which I believe everyone should read), then you know that in order to be human, you should plan around your sleep schedule and playtime, because you need to have those or you’ll lose steam really quickly. Work hard, play hard. Get an ideal but doable weekly schedule going, with spaces in between to stay flexible.

Remember the previous exercise we did on writing daily goals and tasks? It’s time to plan those into your calendar. The rule of thumb is that if your task is longer than 30 minutes, you plan it on your schedule, if your task is longer than 15 minutes, you group them together (I like to use the tasks feature in Google Calendar) and set a time for the day to do all your < 15-min tasks. If it’s a 5 minute task or less, you do it on the spot. Trust me, you’ll feel so much better. You plan your day everyday, the skeleton is just to help structure your day, give it a template.

Google calendars has some other neat features as well. You can have your calendar send you reminders as well. Whether it’s iPhone reminders, email reminders, or text reminders, you can receive it. You don’t have to keep track of everything in your head anymore. That just wastes your brain bandwidth that you could be using for other things. You can also add and organize your tasks on your Google calendar. I sometimes put it there if I can’t immediately act on the task, like getting back to someone you promised you would.

It order to maximize your productivity, you want to aim for as well distributed color of a calendar as possible. Having a giant chunk of school isn’t going to do your productivity or memory any good. Mix in some exercise in the middle, or some time to hang out with your friends. Aim for a time interval on a particular task that slightly pushes you to exercise your willpower, but definitely keep it in a doing time frame. If you find that you can concentrate on a particular task for 30 minutes, try going for 45 minutes next time, or even a hour, before switching tasks. Building concentration, like will power, is a form of exercise that only grows stronger through practice.

Why it works

Having a calendaring system provides two essential benefits for the goal of productivity.

The first benefit is that having a calendar reduces the number of gathering points. What is a gathering point? According to Dave Crenshaw, instructor of Time Management Fundamentals, a gathering point is a space in which unprocessed items gather. If you have unprocessed items somewhere, that is a gathering point. For example, your backpack could be a gathering point. If it’s messy and you have your crumpled homework shoved in there, you have a place where you need to process items. Another could be the makeshift notes you write on your palm. Another could be that particularly SEO-unfriendly email that is buried in your inbox which contains important information from your boss about you’re expected to accomplish this week at work. These are all gathering points, and they are bad.

Why are they bad? It’s because you have to keep track of them all and process all the items in each gathering point. If you don’t, you mind be in big trouble. Keeping track of all the gathering points is hard if not impossible. How are you suppose to remember to check your notes app when you get home? What if you wash your hands and your handwriting becomes smudged with the soap? How often were you suppose to check in with your supervisor for new tasks? There is a giant overhead when you’re trying to manage lots and lots of gathering points.

Having a calendar simplifies everything because it aggregates everything. It’s the perfect medium as THE go-to gathering point. Have to-do’s you want to accomplish by the end of today? Add tasks to your Google calendar. Gleaned important tasks your boss sent you over email? Transfer them over to your weekly goals and plan time in your calendar to accomplish it. Want a reminder to check in with someone in the future? Add it to your Google tasks. By getting rid of many unnecessary gathering points, you reduce the number of gathering points you have to remember and more efficiently process the things you have to do.

The second benefit of implement this system is that it allows you to be in the present. “How is that possible?” people ask me, “if you’re planning for the future? How do you ever stay in the present?” My response to that is that by setting aside a small amount of time to plan your day will free you from planning for the rest of the day. Without a calendar or planner, you would constantly have to ask yourself the question, “What am I suppose to do now?” Asking that question will force you to plan right then and there. Your mind will be occupied with all the logistics, constraints, to-do’s and homework you have to fit in for the next X amount of time. You would worry about whether you can complete things on time or whether you forgot something. Worry paralyzes us, and we often fail to reach a conclusive action when we’re forced to plan on the spot.

The sad thing is, most people ask themselves this question so often that they mentally choose to avoid it. Instead of thinking about what they should be doing right now (which is a pain in the ass), they unconsciously start browsing Facebook or Reddit, since it’s so much less painful. By spending time to plan your day, you free bandwidth in your brain from planning so you can use all your brain power to focus on the task at hand. “What am I suppose to do right now?” You’ll instantly know when you check your calendar. You don’t have to second guess yourself, and you can focus, focus on the present.

By allocating time to plan out your day or week ahead, you can spend 15 mins a day looking ahead so you wouldn’t have to worry about what you have to do throughout your day or where you’re going with your life, you can stay in the now and focus on the task at hand without cluttering. Isn’t that a good tradeoff?

Keeping Track of Your Time

Do you ever wonder where your time went? In a blink of an eye you’re already 18, 19, or 20. What exactly have you done with (about) a quarter of your life? Well, as Monte Cristo once said, “You can kill me, but at least let me keep my memories.” (or something like that, that was the essence). Point is that without consciously living out our lives on a daily basis, doing meaningful things, life can seem to flash by. Whether it’s because you’re playing or working too hard, time seems to slip, so you want to know where it has gone.

Methods

There are various ways to log your time, and I usually stick to 2 or 3 ways that is pretty effective to keep track of what you do. The first is using Google Calendar. Usually throughout the day, when you have a couple of minutes or so throughout the day, spent a couple of seconds to recall what you have done during the day. I usually keep things in 30 minute intervals, because that’s the lowest denominator of time spent on Google Calendar. So in the previous photo of the calendar, I could write down things like “homework” or “sleep” or “hang out with friends.”

Naturally, you will probably run into the problem of forgetting what you did or losing track of time. That is not good. You will have to recover it and try to remember. Usually not remembering what you were doing is a bad sign, because you weren’t living consciously or were aware of what you were doing. BAAAAAAD, don’t let it happen. But we can usually recover or jog your memory as to what happened.

One of the easiest way to find out what you were doing is probably your browser history. That’s usually where people end up slipping. Maybe they caught a photo of a leaping cat on their newsfeed, which led them to reddit, and they all of a sudden spent 2 hrs browsing through internet sites. Yeah, checking your browser history will give you a definitive log of what you did. Another source of clues is your text messages. Maybe you actually spent the last 30 minutes texting a girl (who has subsequently friend-zoned you).

Other times you can jog some memories as to the context of the situation. Those are usually the two ways I tend to remember what has happened if I forget. But if these sources fail, fear not! Just leave it blank. Most people aren’t as OCD as I am when it comes to these things.

Another way to keep track of time is do download RescueTime (ref link). Yes, get it. What RescueTime does is keep track of your computer time and logs your hours. It could be very enlightening as to how you spend your time on the computer, and there are so many features on RescueTime that make life so much more productive. It’s completely customizable and it’ll help you realize the depressing amount of time you spend on Facebook.

Logging Your Time

Start a new excel sheet (I usually like to keep separate excel sheets for each term like 1st semester freshman year, summer, etc), and in the rows start listing out the times you want to track. Usually it entails goals and all your calendar activities. Here’s what mine looks like. It could act like a template for you:At the beginning of every week, you go back to your last week’s calendar and count up how much time you spent for each of these rows. There are certain rules I follow to ensure that I keep an accurate recount of everything. You can choose to follow these rules or not, or make up your own.

Rules

Food, Shower, or Transportation plus anything else that’s productive would eliminate the FoShoTrans time slot. For instance, if I spent my 30 mins in the shower singing, then I won’t count the shower time, but will count the singing time instead. This helps alleviate the amount of time one spends eating, showering, and commuting. Sleeping on the bus would eliminate the transportation time.

Social calendar is very ambiguous, if you eat with the same people during lunch over and over again, that is not considered a social activity, you’re too comfortable around those people and not developing meaningful relationships with them. Eating lunch with new people, going out of your comfort zone to talk to strangers, or hitting on girls count as social. The reasoning is behind my goals #4, #5 (Be social and meet girls). It doesn’t count if you’re just sitting with the same people, it’s quite unproductive actually unless you’re developing a more meaningful relationship (like helping a friend with a crisis or talking about your problems)..

Anything productive that doesn’t fall into any of the categories is your name calendar (i.e. default calendar). This could mean emails, calendar analysis, extra curricular meetings, and preparing for your day.

Unaccounted is any blank spaces you leave on your calendar. Time left is total time in the week subtracted by the total amount of time you log. It could be negative if you multitask or count things twice.

Read/OLearn is reading and outside learning. RT-Prod is RescueTime Productive time (you can find this number in your RescueTime account) RT-Dis is RescueTime Distracting. It’s the unproductive time of RescueTime. The Top 3 Dis. is the top 3 distractions, just so I can identify the most distracting things I’m doing.

I usually write a quick summary as well. At the end of the spreadsheet I like to add a couple of more columns like Total, Average, and Standard Deviation . If you know some basic excel skills, this should be no problem. The standard deviation is actually an important indicator because it tells you how consistent you are at staying on target with your goals.

I have a comment section to note things that occur. Usually it’s commenting about how I spend my time and how I feel about the future. Definitely look over the statistics to identify places where you can save time. Maybe you spend too much time preparing for your day (I average around 10% of my time on FoShoTrans), or maybe you sleep too much, or hang out with your friends too often. Whatever it is, you have to consider whether it is contributing to your goals or whether it is necessary for your survival. If it’s neither of these, it’s time to cut them down. Now you have mastered your time. Moving on to how to save time.

Time Saving Tricks

Online Activities

You should start checking out your RescueTime stats after a week now. It probably has some demoralizing statistics for you (or optimistic, who knows). Point is, you know you can do better. How? StayFocusd (Chrome Extension) and Self Control (Mac Apps).

StayFocusd gives you a set amount of time for distracting internet time every day. You list all the common distracting websites you browse, and give yourself a limit to how much time you want to spend on the website everyday. Then have it run in the browser. Afterwards, everytime you surf a “blocked website,” the countdown clock will slowly wind down. Once you reached 0:00, you are done with distracting sites for the day, and StayFocusd blocks those sites. It’ll seriously make you so much more efficient with your Facebook time, you’ll be blazing through your notifications to avoid dwelling on someone else’s life. No more getting distracted by hot girls from your old high school who posts vacation photos. It forces you to put a priority on the information you’re interested — ones involving you or ones involving other people’s lives

Another setting you should add is the nuclear option. Set your nuclear option to automatically block all your distracting sites from 2AM-10AM (or earlier/later if you prefer). Because nothing happens on Facebook at 2AM, so constantly refreshing and checking your notifications isn’t going to do squat for your enjoyment nor your productivity. Also, there is a strong correlation that the sleepier we get, the more easily distracted we get. So if you don’t have your work finished, you shouldn’t be browsing, and if you do, you should be sleeping.

And you should just block certain sites and applications. Give up video games and television. Do they really benefit your life? I found it depressing when I couldn’t recite all 150 original pokemons today when I used to live and breathe that television show when I was a kid, spending hours upon hours wasting my childhood engaging in that show. The same goes with video games like Runescape, Neopets, and Maple Story. Sure it relieves stress, but there are so many other ways that could release stress more AND make you a better person AND use less time. Check out the “How to Keep Your Sanity” section.

Self Control is a similar app that blocks distracting sites, but it acts more like a timer. When you decide to turn on Self Control for a certain amount of time, you physically shut off the distracting sites from the internet for a certain amount of time. You just can’t go on them, Self Control just blocked the IP addresses from your computer for a certain amount of time. Now you know there is no stopping it, and you could go back to doing your work. I find this helpful if I can’t help but browse Facebook and I’m just wasting my time. Just turn this on and get back to work.

Sleep

Sleep is my biggest weakness, but it also the most important part of your life. Getting out of bed is the hardest thing to do and being sleepy is one of the most demotivating things you can experience. Because what is better than glorious, glorious sleep? I sleep around 7 hours a day, but I tend to vary a lot in my sleep time. Maybe you can do better with 6 or 5 hours of sleep. I’ll tell you what I know and hopefully you can get by with less sleep. This section tends to be very opinionated and on a personal basis. It could work for you, but if it doesn’t, forget it. Honestly, sleep should be the last thing you cut out of your schedule, this is almost as a last resort. Having adequate sleep is very important, especially for maintaining your health and recharging will power. I almost don’t recommend you cutting back on sleep. But if you need that extra boost or would like higher quality sleep, read on!

The key to sleeping? Naps. Naps are scientifically proven to leverage more sleep than large chunks of sleep. I think it’s empirically true as well. I always take a nap in the afternoon dip in the engineering library. It does wonders for your focus. You’re going to want to do homework or study right before you take those naps (then you become really sleepy) and right after, when you become much more focused. Taking more than one nap is encouraged as well. In fact, you should check out this sleep hacking chart. I’ve never fully transitioned to these schedules, but I know the key is to stay consistent . If you have the self-control (or are coincidentally busy enough), then it will probably work out for you.

If I’m on a time crunch, I try not to sleep on my bed. Beds are too comfortable, and you might sleep more than you have to. Couches and desks, on the other hand, are only comfortable enough to sleep until you can survive. I have leveraged much more time and focus from sleeping on couches and desks that it helps me stay awake for longer times in the night. If you plan on sleeping until the morning, but you’re only getting like 3-4 hours of sleep, consider sleeping with the lights on. Something about it makes my rest more restful.

I’m going to spend a paragraph talking about one of my worst nightmares–food comas. Food comas for me tend to not contribute very well to your sleep time while making you very, very tired. You wake up miserable but not well rested. I always end up getting a food coma from eating food from the dining halls and feel pretty bad afterwards. I think there are some ways to prevent food comas. First off, limit the carbs you eat, especially simple carbs from the dining hall. Carbs make you sleepy. Avoid it by eating more proteins or a salad. You could also not eat as much (you know you don’t need another plate of curly fries). Another thing you have to do is to stay hydrated. Always drink water. It’s actually a good ideas for any situation to help you stay awake. Your brain needs water to function and sometimes you need water to stay awake. Do you ever get the feeling when you sleep for a long time and you wake up with a headache or feel lightheaded? That’s because you’re dehydrated, either because you didn’t drink enough water or you sleep so long that by now most of your water has left your body. A similar concept goes into eating food. If you don’t drink water, the food’s going to suck up all the water and you’re going to be dehydrated, and therefore sleepy. If you do plan on napping, try to drink as much water as you can before your nap, and the first sign of consciousness you have, even if you’re super sleepy, get a sip of water. That’s actually how I get out of bed every day. First thing I do when I reach consciousness is drink water, because our body needs it most when we’re awake.

If you have trouble waking up despite the amount of hours you sleep, it’s probably a problem with your self-control. Set up an alarm, and make sure you don’t compromise with yourself and sleep another 10 mins. It will only make you feel more tired when you wake up and scientifically it doesn’t help you feel more well rested. Just do it. Perhaps plan something you can look forward to. If alarms sound too intrusive, consider getting a vibrating alarm. These alarms not only have the option to blast off your ears, they also have an option to have a vibrating unit placed under your unit to buzz you awake. It’s actually pretty relaxing way to wake up, it’s calming and gets my blood flowing. It doesn’t even wake my roommates up because it’s so quiet and only I could feel it. In fact, my roommates have gotten so envious of my alarm system that both of them bought the EXACT same alarm clock model as me. Now we have 3 of the exact same alarm clock in my room =.=

Sleep in chunks of 90 minutes. That’s usually how long a complete sleep cycle lasts. Of course this varies from person to person, so adjust accordingly. If you want to have a “gentle” way of waking up, you should try the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock for iPhone (Sleep as Android for Android users). It has great reviews and it has worked pretty well for me. It uses your phone’s accelerometer to determine how much you move during your sleep and uses that metric to determine what stage you are in your sleep schedule and wakes you up accordingly based on your sleep stage. The only problem with it was that since it requires that you put your phone next to your pillow (i.e. very close to you), I have a tendency to turn it off quickly. But overall, it does pretty good wonders.

Other methods of waking up that I’ve tried that have worked in the past are moaning and/or groaning as loudly as you can, doing the Bruce Almighty wake up routine, shifting to a doggy style position, leaning my head over the bed (so blood flows to my brain), or getting someone to wake you up (Hi Mom!). Good luck with your sleep. Sleep is necessary! Don’t pull all nighters. Stay consistent (even on weekends), and follow these tips.

Food, Shower, Transportation

If you have started logging your hours right now, you will realize that you spend an absurd amount of time just eating, preparing for your day, showering, hygiene, and transportation. I spend around 11% of my total time doing this stuff, totaling 264.5 hours in my 14 weeks here at Berkeley. There has got to be a better use of these times.

So I’ve broken it down to things you can do WHILE you do these. It’ll help you cut down time as I don’t count FoShoTrans when I multitask.

Food

Study homework or class material. Rarely do you have both hands free to do homework while you eat and I strongly discourage doing so. Doing homework while eating will only extend the amount of time it takes for you to eat. Studying counts as school work.

Meet new people. Sit with someone new and talk to them. Count that in the social calendar

Sit with someone you know but haven’t sit in a while. That’s Social.

Listen to Audiobooks. That’s Outside Education.

Check your emails. Only do this if you are comfortable responding to emails on your phone. I have forgotten to respond to many emails because I was too lazy to type things on my phone, and forget them the next time I check my inbox. This belongs is misc. productivity.

Shower

Singing. It’s good practice and makes your voice sound amazing no matter how shitty it usually sounds. One of the best days in my life was when I discovered that my university academic service centers had a laminator that we could use for free. I now print out song lyrics I can take to my shower. And because of the water cohesion, the laminated lyrics stick onto the wall like a screen protector on a phone. Outside Learning

If you’re hardcore, try stretching or doing squats while you shower. Exercise.

Hygiene/Prep

Audiobooks. That’s all you really could do. Don’t try anything else. There are too many tasks in hygiene that introducing another activity would only slow the amount of time to do all your hygienic and preparatory work.

Transportation

Audiobooks.

Singing

Talk to people (if you can)

Sleeping (if on a bus)

Read a book (if you’re on a bus or can see where you’re going)

Note about audiobooks: Audiobooks could mean any form of auditory learning, whether it’s audiobooks, Podcasts, itunesU, TedTalks, NPR, or other forms of learning. I could go through them pretty quickly as I commute around every day. I tend to read less-than-legally downloaded books because there’s a wider selection of subjects. But if you like something, you should definitely consider buying it. There are plenty of legal sites that offer a wide selection of audiobooks. If you don’t have audiobooks, download tedtalks or get a TED app from the app store. Or if have the radio, find your NPR station. I like reading fiction books via audiobooks and sparknoting the summary plots afterwards to make sure I’m on the right path. There is also a strong collection of self-help books for your benefit as well. But audiobooks are your friend. Everyone’s listening to music all day, every day, you should spend some of that music time into audiobook time. You spend most of your working time listening to music anyways. I spend about 2 hours a day commuting back and forth from my dorm to school and around campus to classes. If I spent all that time listening to audiobooks (which I don’t), I’ll could read Ender’s Game 65 times. A lot of times I listen at 2x speed as well if I feel particularly focused or if the book tends to have a lot of fluffy material. Imagine all the knowledge you could gain if you just spent your typical 1 hour a day listening to something informational on your iPod or MP3 Player.

Personally I like real books and TedTalks, but people could have their own opinions. But do it! It will change your intellectual life.

Gathering Points

When we discussed gathering points earlier in the guide, I talked about how having many gathering points in a bad thing. I would take an inventory of the gathering points you have and reduce the number of gathering points you need. Take each of those gathering points, and find ways to process them more efficiently.

Here are my top 6 gathering points along with some commentary:

1. Google Calendar & Tasks: my absolute favorite (who would have guessed). It allows me to associate to-do’s with times and helps me plan out my day. Whenever I discover an unprocessed item (like a to-do), I throw it onto there.

2. My email inbox: I have a love-hate relationship with my email. Mainly hate. The trouble is that my important emails are mixed with newsletter/spam emails. Use labels for your emails, and use filters to automatically process the emails in your inbox, leaving you with only the important emails you have to respond to. The other concern is that the more emails you send, the more you’ll receive. Limit yourself to checking your emails consistently a constant number of times a day, and don’t exceed that number. It’ll prevent you from wasting time staring at your inbox.

3. Facebook: Similarly with emails, I use Facebook mainly to communicate with my friends. The News Feed is practically useless, and it’s extremely distracting especially if you went on Facebook to reach out to a friend. Therefore. use a customized Adblock script to remove all the irrelevant parts of Facebook (ie the Newsfeed) and/or the chrome extension Kill News Feed. I also limit the number of times I check Facebook a day.

4. My Evernote duty log. Often I break down large tasks into smaller component tasks. If I’m writing code, documentation is often important to increase efficiency. If I encounter bugs as I code, I want to jot them down so I don’t forget them. If I overcome a difficult problem, I want to document it so I know how to resolve it next time I see it. I want to keep track of all the hurdles so my team members don’t go through the same things. That’s what my duty log is for. It’s kind of like a post-it, but with notes attached to it. This is a great substitute for post-its if you want to take notes throughout your day. If you’re a student, it’s a great way to jot down summaries of your to-do’s so you remember better

5. My cell phone. Phone calls, text messages. I tend to dislike texting as a medium of relationship development. It’s completely subpar to face-to-face interaction. As someone who stared at my phone in anticipation for my friends’ replies, texting is also a horrible distraction for the non-multitasker. Therefore, turn off your phone when you’re in a homework session. You can check your phone during study breaks. No one’s going to call you mid-session telling you your grandma died, and if they did, you would be at most 30-1 hour late the news anyways. If it’s your friend calling/texting you to hang out, you shouldn’t be accepting anyways, since you’ve committed the time already to studying.

6. My post-its. I already talked about this. It’s a nice to write things out

Here are some horrible gathering points for your productivity:

– That notes app everyone has on their iPhone/Android. No one ever uses it. If you jot a thought down in Notes, don’t ever expect to see it again.

– Snapchat. No one snapchats to individuals anymore. Just like the News Feed. 90% of the snaps you get bring you no value to your own life.

Think about all the gathering points you have in your life, and ask yourself, “Is this gathering point necessary? Or is it something I can merge with another one?”

Simplification of Your Life

After my quest to find out how to squeeze the most things out of my time, I found out that there are things that have juice that aren’t worth the squeeze. It’s not that I’m lazy. My friend once quoted Pareto’s Law from Tim Ferris’ book “The Four-Hour Workweek,” “80% of the work you get done is done by 20% of your time.” 20% of your input generates 80% of your output. “Well,” I questioned, “does that mean I could do 400% more work?”

Although I won’t take it to that extreme, there are factors that may to taking more time than you originally intend to. Perhaps you’re spending more time reading email than you would like, or you’re investing in unrewarding relationships, you’ll probably reconsider whether those activities and commitments are worth your time or effort or not. Your time is valuable, so take some time every week or month to see if the things you’re doing are time well spent.

Study Tips

Develop Good Work Ethics

Everyone has a different style of studying. Some people like to study in their rooms, others like to study in a noisy coffee shop. Some like to get a study group together, others like to study alone. Whatever your preferences are, there are still some core fundamentals to studying productively. I’ll try to elucidate some tips to helping you become the most productive student in Berkeley.

The most important thing to remember is that in general if you aren’t inspired to do homework, the best thing is just start working anyways. Seriously, this has helped me so tremendously. Never think about an assignment as a task of completion, but rather a task of initiation. This is again re-emphasized in The Now Habit . You should never ask yourself, “when should I finish this assignment?” But rather you should always ask yourself “when can I begin?” Notice the use of “can.” It uses a sense of optimism and sense of commitment. If you don’t want to start an assignment, commit yourself to doing it for only 15 minutes. 15 minutes (usually less) is the amount of time is takes to get your brain in the mood of studying or doing homework. Treat every task as a start of a journey, even if you’re finishing up a project. The starting mentality gets better with practice, but the concept holds.

Never play the victim when it comes to difficult tasks, always take the proactive role. You’re only going to make yourself miserable if you go against your free will and saying “I have to do it.” Instead, changing your mentality to “I want to do it” could completely change how you see your assignments and assignments. Why, after all, are you taking a class if it’s not to learn about a particular subject or major? What you’re doing should be directly relevant to you and your goals

This brings me to another point. You have to convince yourself that you are a hard worker. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. There was a scientific study (back by other institutions) that basically goes like this (further explained by the NYMag Article):

A group of children are divided into two experimental groups. Both groups of students are given a moderately difficult but doable task of completing mental challenges. One group of students were then praised for “being smart” while the other group was praised for “being hardworking.” The researchers then gave the children a choice of another mental task: a task that is the same difficulty as the one they completed or a task that is harder to solve. Researchers found out that the 90% of the children who were praised for their work ethics chose the harder task whereas a majority (probably around 55%) of the children who were praised for their intelligence chose the easier task.

Maybe you’re blaming your parents for fucking you up as a child by praising your intelligence and making you lazy (I had a mixture of praise of both). But for fucks sake you’re in college now. Your position in life right now is your own doing, take some control over your life and your attitude on life.

The problem with modern society is, no one’s going to praise you for your hard work. Everyone’s going to talk about how smart you are, or how you can ace tests without studying, or can do things without trying. Don’t get sucked into this. Sometimes I find praises like these offensive or condescending. I’ve worked hard for my grades and knowledge, I want to be rewarded for what I’ve earned, not ascribed as an inherent trait that I was just “lucky to have”. People have complimented me on these attributes. “James why are you so smart?” “James you’re such a fast learner!” “James you’re just godly with CS.” Yeah, no shit, it’s because I spend more time dedicating myself to these activities that I have reached this level. Sometimes I feel like people do that to mess with me, to put me on a pedestal just so they can watch me stumble and fall. The pressure of holding up an image of being naturally smart is hard and frankly completely stupid. Peers who peer pressure you into this image should not be around you at all. Correct them if they are ignorant, but cut them loose if they want to see you fail.

Point is you have to praise yourself for your hard work whenever you accomplish something. No one else will do it for you. If someone asks you why you are so smart, you reply that it’s because you worked really hard in this class. You want to be perceived as an honest and hard worker. Every time you check a bullet off your to-do list. Congratulate yourself on how hard you’ve worked to get the pleasure of scratching the task off your Post-It note. Even say self-praises out loud if you can. I’ve actually taken a fully Anthony Robbins self improvement course where I had to take walks every day at 8AM for a whole week where the audiotape tells you to chant “Everyday in every way I’m getting better and better” or “I know I can because I can” or turning an “energy dial” at the center of your chest. It’s cheesy but it works in mysterious ways.

Everything you have that is important to you, you have earned it at one point or another. Whether it’s your grades, your romantic partner, your reputation, your body, your friends, it’s all done through hard work. Spend some time to understand and embrace that concept. When people hand you things on a silver platter, it’s no accomplishment of yours. Work hard.

Study Habits

Now that you have a good mentality to start with, here’s how you keep the flame going. Use the pomodoro technique (watch the video!). The idea is that you set aside 25 minutes of uninterrupted work. That means during these 25 mins you don’t take text messages, phone calls. You don’t go on Facebook. Don’t even think about eating or going on other websites. Even if someone comes up to you and talk, spend a quick 10 seconds explaining that you’re busy right now and you’ll talk to them when you’re available. Just focus. The point of this time-boxing technique is that since you are dedicating the time to do something, you might as well be as productive as you can within this time. Have you ever had those classes where teachers give 10 minutes of class time in the end of the class to start on your homework and everyone clamors to get their homework finished by then? The idea’s the same. You’re stuck in class for an hour anyways, with no distractions, you might as well make the best out of it.

Now when your 25 minutes is done, you get a 5 minute break to do whatever you want. Check your texts, calls, FB notifs. Talk to someone. I suggest stretch and minor exercise breaks. After the break is done, you go back to your work and start a new pomodoro.

I personally do pomodoro chunks of 55 mins followed by 5 mins, but 25 min is probably more efficient for beginners. It’s difficult to do at first, but you’ll get the hang of it. I personally use Time Out to track my pomodoro times because it’s automatic (it goes on and off automatically) and it actually blocks your computer screen so it forces you to stand up and stretch, get water, or go to the bathroom while you wait.

Also, to help me focus, I open up two windows. One of them is my personal stuff (I usually open my gmail, calendar, rainymood.com, and 8tracks.com, hypem.com, or songza.com), and one of the other one is purely academics. So if I’m working on my computer science homework, I would keep all relevant CS pages open on my second window and hide my first one. The idea behind this is that you keep your personal and academic tabs separate so you don’t see flashing tabs at you or tempting you like a button waiting to be pushed.

Also a key point is to never check your email or facebook the first thing you do. It’s going to set a bad first step forward to your study session and you’ll mostly likely get hooked or distracted by one thing or another.

How to Keep Your Sanity

People burn out, it’s a fact. People crumble under the stress. One-too-many all-nighters pulled could change a goody-two-shoes into a hardcore, biker-shoes heroin-addict. You think this whole sanity thing is like a disease stricken upon unsuspecting over achievers, but in reality it’s completely preventable.

How do you stay focused in all this stress and work? You need to find some ways. I’ll show you some of mine.

Pick a Hobby (or Two or More)

As I iterated before, you HAVE TO plan fun times, break times to help you destress or unwind. This doesn’t have to mean mind-numbing television or drugs and alcohol (I actually highly discourage it). I recommend both a sport and a creative outlet.

Exercise is important to keep everyone happy. Even if you aren’t getting enough sleep, you should still exercise a bit. Exercising produces happy hormones that makes you happy and it’s a great change of pace from your typical school work. You’ll meet a more diverse group of people than your classes. You’ll get the stress out. Sometimes I exercise with all my problems on my mind. I physically exert my frustrations on whatever’s on hand, whether it’s lifting weights or running hard for the frisbee so that by the time I’m dead tired, the problems don’t seem so problemsome anymore, and I achieve a sense of tranquility that helps me tackle my other challenges when I’m done. It’s really rewarding. Go to the gym, join an intramural or club team, or just throw a frisbee with your roommate. It’s going to make a significant difference, and it’ll help you keep off those freshman 15. Spend at least 5 hours a week exercising (Walking around campus doesn’t count).

Pick a creative outlet. Whether it’s guitar, singing, drawing, writing, photoshopping, cooking, corn-maze-designing, find something that is outside your major that you enjoy doing. It doesn’t have to be something you’re good at, but you should enjoy doing it. For example, I love singing, but I’m just so horrendously horrible at it. So what I do is I make sure I stay on campus until late at night until the libraries close (around 1 or 2AM), then when I walk home, there won’t be anybody around me to hear me so I could sing to my heart’s content. It’s so relaxing when you reward yourself with these small things for your hard work. Try picking up an instrument or a hobby. You don’t have to stick with one. Check out this reddit post out for ideas and these online resources for ideas. If you’re like me, you’re going to want to learn everything because everything is so exciting.

Spend Time Alone

You’re going to have to spend some time out of your hectic day to reflect on your life. I tend to do this on my walks home at night. Sometimes all it takes is a deep breath of solace and enjoy the peaceful environment around you as you reflect on where you are in life and the exciting adventures ahead of you. I just smile knowing what I’ve done that day and how satisfying it is to accomplish what I did.

Other times I do it in my room. I find cleaning my room very therapeutic. Singing in the shower also works wonders for your mental health and spirit. Just anything you want to do for fun, just do it. Sometimes I eat out by myself, and not give a crap about what other people think.

Spending time alone doesn’t always mean happy times. There are moments when I’m sad or homesick as well. Sometimes you want to go back home or go back to when things once were. School’s too stressful, your classes are too hard, life’s too unfair. It’s depressing I understand. During these moments, I like to go to someplace isolated and quiet at night (where you have a decent amount of privacy and peace), and just sit down. Just sit, don’t do anything. If you have peaceful, classical or soft indie music, you can play those. I just sit and think about my life. Sometimes I cry a bit (I don’t like to cry in front of others). I just think about my life, or stare into space. Don’t be afraid to cry, you’ve found a private space for a reason. It’s cathartic and really does solve some personal problems for you. Other times I just sigh a lot. Listen to lyrics if you want to, sometimes they are soothing. Frank Ocean once said, “When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. But when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.” Sit there for as long as you want to or feel like. Eventually you’ll feel slightly more peaceful even though nothing’s been resolved. Then you’ll look at the night sky and perhaps the stars. Maybe you’ll look at the scenery if there is one, and you begin to appreciate the things you have. Be grateful for those things. It doesn’t have to be something superficial like owning the iPhone 6, it should be gratitude for your health, your family, or the fact that you don’t have that hated class tomorrow.

When you feel like you’re ready, you can head back to your room to get cleaned up or fall asleep (sleep tends to be a major contributing factor to how happy I am).

I would like to run a social experiment. My sister Ruby Maa is stressed at MIT right now. She has worked so much harder than me studying Chemical Engineering in college. I think she would appreciate it if a bunch of strangers (or even just some) sent her an encouraging facebook message (via link) like “Thanks for being such an awesome sister for James Maa. And good luck on your finals!” would be awesome. It’s just an optional request because I’m so grateful for my sister :’)

But yes, keep a close friend around, someone you can tell all your secrets to and someone who is patient enough to listen to you complain about your daily life. Really take advantage of the network of friends you have, many of them (including myself) do have some form of interest in hearing about your problems. Find someone who’s willing to listen and tell them about some of your concerns you have in life. Don’t burden them with trivial stuff though, like “OMG I hate my professor” or milk them for compliments by saying “OMG I’m so fat” (which is supposed to prompt the response “no you’re not!” followed by some compliment, but I have ceased to indulge anyone who does this to me).

Real life concerns I have discussed with my sister are things like “I’m not sure if I should switch majors” or “Man sometimes I get really homesick” or “Sometimes I feel so dumb” or “I really want to give up and become a vagabond.”

You don’t have to talk to them looking for answers. Just saying out your problems out loud is enough to alleviate the stress you’re experiencing. It also has the magical effect of making you and your friend closer. My sister was super supportive (in her own way) when I said, “Man, sometimes I feel so lonely, I just can’t seem to get close to anyone.” and she just said, “yeah, that’s me for the past 2.5 years.” And that made me feel 10 times better knowing someone is in the same situation and could sympathize.

Have a Role Model

Find someone who’s someone you want to be. And it’s better if your role model obtained his fame or achievements through hard work and not naturally born talent (think Steve Jobs not Lebron James). I have several role models who I can look up to. Some of them are my friends who I won’t divulge, but sometimes the personal element to it helps you understand your role models as human beings and not demi-gods.

Ruby’s one of my role models because she probably works harder than me, sleeps less than me, and gets better grades than me. She’s awesome at life even though it may seem a bit unbalanced. But knowing her as a sister I can tell that she wasn’t born a MIT student, she earned it through her hard work, and she got into MIT through that despite all the hardships she faced (including being the 2nd generation asian family guinea pig). Most of my problems are trivial compared to the ones she faces everyday, and it just makes my life seem more exciting when I’m playing catch up with my sis (whom I want to beat someday).

Start a Blog

Start a blog. Get one on tumblr or wordpress. Or buy a domain name and get cheap hosting. Ask me if you have any problems with this.

Write two things every days that made you smile or made you grateful. Try to ignore the bad things, they usually don’t deserve a spot there. The purpose isn’t to attract an audience or to cave into consumer demands, it’s to ensure that you are grateful and optimistic with your life every day. Small things, like a cute girl smiling your way, or finding $5 on the sidewalk could change your perspective on how your day was. Focus on the good things, the different things, and your life can seem like a series of adventures, day by day. You’ll begin to ask yourself “I wonder what exciting things will show up on my blog tomorrow” and you’ll begin to seek out adventures for yourself.

If you would like, you should have weekly, monthly, and yearly highlights. That way it forces you to read your blog posts. It’ll really structure your semester and help you answer the question, “What the fuck did I do during this time?”

Go Outside Your Comfort Zone

Relieve your stress by going outside your comfort zone. As they say, “kill the tension before the tension kills you.” Go ask that cute girl on a date, go breakdance in your lounge, show up to class in your Stanford pajamas or banana suit. Probably not that crazy, but you get the idea, take risks, it’s the thing that will make you feel alive when you feel dead for most of the day.

Try to do one thing that scares you every day, it’ll make a difference as to how you see how you spent your life everyday. It could be “I studied all day” or “I studied all day AND asked a girl out AND got flat out rejected” (awesome! that’ll be a great story to tell) or “I studied all day AND asked a girl out AND scored a date” FUCKING HI-FIVES! :D If you have trouble, think of this motto: “Always make the decision that makes for a better story to tell.”

If you want variety, try doing rejection therapy or the comfort challenge. It has done wonders for me.

Introduce Variety

Do something different. Flush the toilet with your left hand. Try drawing the lecturer’s face onto a sphinx. Hopscotch your way down the sidewalk. Take a different route, try a different restaurant, study in a new place. Anything to break out your monotone habits (keep the good habits though!). Variety helps keep you sane because you still have traction of your time in memorable ways. One time I found out that Sproul Plaza (my university’s biggest plaza and busiest) rents out tables for clubs to promote their organizations. I decided to fake being a club and rent out a table to do homework. It was so rewarding and exciting that my friend and I are starting a “Homework on Sproul” club for those students who want to combine the academic and social experience of college.

Just Take A Break

Sit around, go on reddit, hang out with your friends, watch tv, be unproductive every once in awhile. Usually in the moments of the highest stress we realize the things we always wanted to do in our free time, and usually it doesn’t involve video games or tv. Spend some time to do these cool things. Go paintballing, hang out at the beach, or just watch a movie with some friends. You deserved it.

Don’t study the waking hours of your dead week. Spend a bit of time to do other things as well. Just chill for an hour after a long session of work.

You’ll feel so much more refreshed afterwards that you become more willing to tackle on new challenges.

A Caveat

During my productivity pursuit, I have fallen into the trap of putting a lot of my life on pause. If I imagine going back to high school, there were so many moments when I convinced myself that I couldn’t enjoy my high school life because I was busy preparing for college, doing homework, or studying for tests. All those statements weren’t true by the way. I always ended up not being particularly productive, and always more depressed. But the point is that I managed to miss out on so many fun and amazing opportunities in my life because I thought the only way to be a productive student was to cut out all joy and pleasure from it. It’s what I was raised on anyways. My mom always told me to sacrifice your happiness now for the happiness of your future.

But I think it’s a load of B.S. . You can be productive AND have fun at the same time. Work hard play hard. Because I have established that you must do X, Y, and Z to keep yourself sane, those act as your forms of life. These are the memories you will cherish when you are out of college. You’ll remember your hard work, but the memory of the hard work is cumulative. The moments you remember most are the individual experiences, the one Friday night out, the one football game, the new thing you tried, the new girl you met. These are the stories you will be proud to tell your sons and grandsons, so don’t let school get in the way.

Thanks for Sticking it Through and Good Luck on Finals Week!

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98 Responses

A productivity guide coming from a student is far more useful than those books written by professors or researchers. Thank you for writing this piece of work. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I should probably get back to work now…

Hey James! This is a GREAT post, and I will likely share it with my dual credit students at the high school where I am teaching this semester (I teach english).

Can you clarify a bit on how you track your time? I know you said that you go back during the day and jot things down, look at browser history, etc., but I am wondering about the physical tracking. Do you record it on the Google calendar? On your to do list?

Thanks for the great awesome incredibly helpful article – it’s helped to get me inspired and back at work on my comprehensive exams :-)

That’s awesome to hear! Hope it works well. Would love to hear how it works out and the feedback students give (I know that adopting some of these strategies could be daunting). Biggest problem for students is motivation, I’ll post something I’ve written in high school about finding a passion and being proactive in high school.

As to answer your question, I do retroactively record my time spent on my Google Calendar if I end up doing anything out of my schedule. It’s a nice way to keep record of how you spend your time and it’s quite cool to scroll back and forth between weeks to see what you have done and what you’ve accomplished

this was by far one of the best guides/posts I have read in a long time. It was genuine, interesting, and informative. It’s funny reading this now because a few weeks ago I pretty much rebooted my life and have the exact same routines, albeit with nuances in all.

Firstly, thanks for the work you put into this post. I love it when I see students (and very recent students) helping out other students. On another note, this is really long and am going to procrastinate on reading this! :) To Instapaper this will go!

Well, thank you James, that’s some very good advices, so I’m going to apply some now. I wish I read your post sooner, because my finals are coming next week (France), and I did absolutely nothing during the past month… Thank mate, you rock !

While I really enjoyed this post, I’m not so sure about the sleeping method. We learned in class that one should not feel tired if one does not have a sleep debt. Not being able to wake up in the morning is usually a problem with not enough sleep, not self control. I can see why this method of sleeping would work in an university setting in which one needs long wakeful hours, but I doubt that it’s a good thing long-term. Again, that’s just what I learned in psychology class. If you have evidence otherwise I would be interested.

That said, the anti-distraction website were very helpful, and all of this is very good advice. Thanks for this post!

I agree! Sleeping should be the last thing you optimize and may produce long term health risks. It’s definitely not worth accumulating sleep debt when you really need.
Personally (and this is just my opinion), I think that at a university setting, it may be more beneficial to be a bit sleep deprived just because of the sheer amount of opportunities and work presented at college.
Not much, research has been done on sleep, but from what I can tell, people have accomplished some pretty cool things with less sleep (all those MIT kids!)

Hey James. I know this is probably meant for college students who are struggling in situations much worse off, but this really helps me a lot as a high school student. I’m a junior and an online homeschooled student, so I have no social life and spend my 16/24 hours in front of a computer procrastinating. I’m literally behind all my classes and I feel depressed all the time. AP tests are coming in, I have to study for the SAT/SAT subject tests (my friends back at home already took it and many of them got high scores), and start volunteer work. It’s already the middle of February and I haven’t even touched the second quarter of my subjects (some I haven’t even touched my first quarter).
I have no idea how to study efficiently for AP tests and SATs (both my parents were brought up in the lower class as 1st gen Asian-Americans, so they can’t really hope and only have high hopes for me), and my sister is too busy with college to help me out.
I am in a mental hell hole. I’m not good at speaking out my feelings (as I was alone for nearly 2 years) and I have zero friends, so I think I may be going insane with social anxiety and depression–in other words, I’m stuck moping on the past and distressed about the future judgmental gazes.
To top it off, I was once an all A honors student back in 9th grade in highschool, so my ego took a huge, enormous blow after coming to a foreign continent and falling behind in all of my online classes. So basically, right now, I’m an emotional rollercoaster ride that is occupied by Frodo during the last half of their 3rd installment movie.
I was losing hope in everything, and then I saw your post as I was searching ways to relieve stress.
Just reading this everyday takes a significant weight off of my shoulders.
Literally, you sharing your story gives me hope and motivation.
I want to go to college and study what I love through blood, sweat, and tears, like you. But right now, I feel it’s a little impossible… (I’m still trying though! I’m utilizing your study habits)
Nevertheless, I love your article. It stops the suicidal tendencies I have :)
Thank you, and sorry for this long post. I hope you have a great day and continue to study your best for your dreams.

James, how do you handle your personal finances? Could you please blog about this? I use GNU cash and it’s cool to have a double entry system, but it’s kind of tedious.

Also, do you just overwrite your planned calendar with the activities you really do? (E.g. if you had “programming” planned but you decided to take a break, you erase “programming” and overwrite “break”?)

One more thing: Do you actually do mental math to add up from your calendar the amount of time spent each week in a certain area or do you have a script or something?

I still don’t handle my personal finances yet. I would love to blog about this actually. It might force me to learn more about personal finances haha. In fact one of my friend and I are starting a blog that’s dedicated to educating young adults what it takes to be a mature and independent adult. We will be teaching skills and writing guides like personal finance, cooking, socializing, personal enrichment, and other topics we deem are necessary to have a fulfilling adulthood. Would you be interested in that? We’re trying to gauge interest.

And yes, I do tend to overwrite a lot of activities and move things around. It’s better to be honest with yourself than to lie off your butt.

I do mental math+calculator if i need it. I’ll probably write a program sometime to help automate it for me, I’m still getting the hang around the Google API

If you do ever automate the task, please share the script on your blog! I’m adopting your google calendar-to-excel-sheet time traking hack, but having to manually count calendar time per area and input the time in the excel is a bit of a pain..

Hey James,
Your motivation is impressive, to say the least!
I’m also a Cal student, graduating next semester.
I would be down to help out with the personal finances blog. I’ve been supporting myself since age 19 (when I moved to the US by myself from Ukraine) and can definitely give some useful tips to the kids who are entering the independent world.
Lemme know :)

I can’t really put this into effect right now because of the irregularity of my summer vacation, but I definitely want to try your plan next semester. I would love to boost my productivity and work on my self-control, and your methods seem to have been successful so far. :D

On another note, how long have you had that special alarm clock? (I’m considering getting one myself, but the reviews have an odd range of responses, and the older ones seem to have shoddier quality…)

It works for me haha so I don’t think it’s bad. Personally it’s pretty durable too. If you remember turning off your alarm when you wake up and fall asleep again, it’s not the alarm’s fault for not waking you up.

Don’t know if you’ll see this since you published this post a while ago but I just wanted to thank you for all this advice. I stumbled across this on r/getstudying on reddit and it’s the most useful thing I read on there. I’m just starting at university and wil be implementing all your strategies. Once again, thank you very much.

Hello there! This blog post couldn’t end up written any benefit! Reading because of this blog post reminds all of us of my traditional room significant other! He normally kept revealing this. Most definitely i’ll forward it post to help you him. Can bet he would have a decent read. Thanks for your time for writing!

This is INCREDIBLE! Thank you so much for taking your time to write this up.
The entire time while I was reading, my jaw dropped in amazement. Some thoughts that popped up were, “Wow, I’d really like to meet this guy”, “Holy Shmoly (you can guess where that one popped up, that google calendar is really something), and “I thought I was a time freak…”

It seems like you’re going to do incredible things–you already are. I hope you achieve all of your goals and more, because you inspire and help others achieve theirs! Thank you once again! (:

I know you may not see this comment, as it was posted so long ago, and it seems you haven’t updated the site in a while, but on the off chance that you do, I just want to say thanks for the great advice! As a 1st year computer science student trying to make the most of her time as she heads into the second semester, this guide has been highly useful and given me loads of ideas on how to become more productive. You seem to have your life together, and it’s inspiring to see. I look forward to reading your computer science guide :)

This is really relevant and helpful! (Except, I’m in yr 11 currently)
Been trying it out, but kinda stuck with the goals – I have made around 13 big goals, but in order to achieve them I have to achieve smaller ones (that are achievable by habits that I don’t yet have)

Eg; Goal 1 is to get into Law, preferably at University of Melboune
In order to do that, I have to get an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admittance Ranking) of 90+ but in order to do that I have to get around 80% in my subjects. The key habits are Homework and consistent study.

My favorite way of tracking goals is how much time I spend on a particular goal. If yourself paralyzed by the daunting challenge of getting into law school, I would suggest breaking down your goals into smaller ones (like you have done). For example, getting good grades for me is an enormous and yet vague task, but if I can break the task down into manageable parts, it’ll be easier on my stress levels. I write weekly tasks I need to complete along with the amount of time it takes to complete them, whether it’s midterms to keep track of or projects/problem sets due. Then when I write what I have to do on a day-to-day basis, I can look at the amount of time commitments I have made for the week in each one of my weekly tasks, and assign time to put in those time, and all of a sudden, things work out. If you can complete your day-to-day goals in a consistent manner, you’ll be able to complete your weekly goals. If you complete your weekly goals consistently, then you’ll get to your larger goals.

I suppose the key difference that frustrates people is when people talk about goals, goals are always in the future. It’s always about someplace you will be, a destination if you will. By breaking down a goal into actionable tasks, you can eventually find the journey. Keep breaking down your goals into smaller tasks and just focus on being consistent. Everything will build up from there!

Hey James,
Thanks for sharing this guide. It has really helped me manage my time and become more productive than before, but I have one quick question for you.
As a university student, I sometimes feel that I think more about studying rather than actually studying. What I mean is that I always have studying at the back of my mind the whole day, but I don’t spend as much time ACTUALLY studying. For example, sometimes I don’t go to the gym because I feel that I can utilize that time studying, but I end up staying home and procrastinating anyway.
I’m sure you experience this sometimes as well, so how do you get over this?

Hey Ankur,
I understand how you feel. I think I’ve come to realize that these thought patterns are signs of guilty and worry. I used to do a similar thing in which I cancel plans with my friends in order to study, but end up not being able to because I consistently feel guilty about missing out on fun things I could be doing. I think the best anyone could do is during this time to change your scenery. If you decide to work out, go to the gym and be around other people who also decide to work out too. If you decide to study instead, go to a library and sit down and get studying. I am apt to believe staying at home leads to a lot of comfort and lethargy as well as isolation, which may not be good for anyone. Now during those times in which I feel like I should study, I go someplace where I think I best can. For someone quiet it could a quiet library. For someone who likes to be around people on a Friday night, I like going to late night cafes or libraries that have a good amount of people. If you find that staying home makes you lazy (like it does for me), try to go places that bring out the best in you!

Hey, this is amazing. I used to be productivity-obsessed (during the summer before college) as I read blogs and books like this. I’d go running everyday, practice challenging puzzles, and learn new things all while having time to hangout with friends and do a research project at a local university. But when I entered college, I fell into a slump that took a heavy toll on my grades and work ethic. Now that freshman year is over, it’s time to pickup that momentum again and regain my independence. I’m going to use these techniques to turn things around for the betterment of my research work, grades, and sanity.

I know you mentioned video games. Personally, I don’t really play video games by myself anymore, but I still play them with friends because at least that’s “socializing.” Plus, if I’m at a friend’s house, I don’t want to refuse to play video games because they’re not productive because, in that situation, I’m just hanging out and socializing. At least, that’s what I think.

That’s fair. I’ve seen many friendships that bonded over video games. For me, it’s a slippery slope I don’t want to tread again. Just like how there ARE casual smokers who do it to socialize and bond with people, there are also casual smokers who turn a social activity into an addiction.

Btw, I looked at your resume and noticed you’ve done courses from Coursera. I’ve done MOOC’s in the past (from Coursera and edx) but I’ve never put the course directly on my resume.

I know that, while few people complete MOOC’s, MOOC’s are growing rapidly, and, perhaps may be prevalent in the future of learning. (Not that they will replace a college education but, rather, they will be more commonplace and desirable). What do you think is the future of MOOC’s? Do you feel as though future employers will be particularly interested in them? Also, are you aware of the Certificate track that allows you to get a secure, personalized certificate from Coursera? This allows you to prove to employers that you passed the course and it’s more verifiable than simply writing that you completed the course.

For me it acts more as a signal of character than a certificate of accomplishment. I believe MOOC’s are suppose to supplement your other credentials are your resume, not supplant them. That’s just anecdotal experiences though. Also, no one ever asks for certificates. I rarely get asked to submit a transcript, much less a MOOC certificate.

Hey, thanks for your response. I was also wondering, does keeping your own personal website (the way you have this one) help you with your opportunities that you find? In essence, does it improve your employability? I’ve been considering starting my own domain and writing about my scientific thoughts that I encounter. I’d put my resume and other information for people to find on my website, but I’m also concerned about issues like having to take the time to update it constantly.

Mm… I think it depends on what type of job you want or what industry you want to go into. It hasn’t helped me much with employability, but that wasn’t the original reason why I started it, and hence the reason why I don’t update it very often.

Thank you so much for posting this, it is extremely helpful. I do have a few questions for you, hopefully you will see this comment! I am 14, and currently a high school student who just finished my freshman year. I am looking on how to prepare for this upcoming school year, SAT/ACT testing (how to study for it), planning and organize my days/activities better. I am home-schooled, but I attend a private two-day school that isn’t just moms teaching a group of 8 students. It is a classical education, and can be difficult to balance out through the week. I use a planner I purchased at Target, and Google Docs to write down my tasks, but it isn’t working for me at all. I find myself ignoring them, and I end up filling my schedule with less-important activities, or getting distracted on my computer and procrastinating. I have tried setting a daily time-limit for computer time, and I’ve taken a study skills seminars as well. I’ve figured out how I learn in class, however, I don’t know how to realistically make an organized task list and stick to it for the entire year.

My fear for your amazing way of planning out my days like you have it, is that my schedule will become just another thing to fill out and not really pay attention too. I really like this way of using Google Calendar, because I use it for my extra curricular activities. What would you recommend for me? How would someone like me start using this and it actually work?

Oh man you’re way ahead of the curve! If the calendar’s not helping you, then you don’t have to fill it up completely. In hindsight, I think at your age the biggest difference I can make in terms of the quality of my education is the quality of people I spent with. I tried to surround myself with people who also have a curious and hardworking mind because they bring out the best in me. I don’t know how easy or difficult it is to create this kind of environment, but it definitely makes a difference on how it shapes your view of the world. Good luck!

Great post, I found this through Reddit and I’m very glad that I did. I would like to ask you a question if you don’t mind? What do you do when you have big events/holidays that disrupt the general flow of your productivity?
For example I am soon having a friend come and visit me from another country for 2 weeks, and I know that over this time I will unlikely be as productive as I could be. Do you find it hard to get back into the swing of things after something like this? What would you say is the best way to do so, or what should be kept in mind?

Great question! In fact, I recently entered a relationship and it has disrupted some flow of productivity. I usually set aside time to develop these relationships, but due to the unplanned nature of how relationships work, I learned to adjust. I think a general tip is to know how much time you want to put into your work or study a week. I tend to measure the fruits of my efforts by input, not output, since I believe progress rarely progress in such a linear and orderly fashion. I would schedule the time blocks into my week, and leave whatever time I have for other things, like developing a relationship. Putting all your tasks in block form gives me an impression of roughly how much free time I have if I do all the work I intend to, so therefore it becomes more like a to-do list than a straight up schedule. Now, suppose my friend does decide to visit me at 3pm today, but I have something scheduled to do, it’s not too difficult to move the work block into a different time of the same week. Keeping everything in week-long chunks prevents you from continually pushing things aside and forces you to recognize when you push things off too often.

The main point is scheduling is understanding your priorities and time commitments. Do you want to put work first? Or your significant other first? I’m not saying one is better than the other nor saying what’s the right schedule to adopt, but once you understand 1. how much time you want to spend with your different endeavors and 2. how feasible your intended balance is, you’ll more likely than not create a schedule you’re satisfied with.

I was wondering, how do you differentiate between “outside education” and “break” if you’re browsing information online? i.e., looking up information about a topic that interests you on Reddit for an hour.

Also, about how many hours a week do you leave blank/unaccounted for, and just fill in retroactively?

Outside educations are generally hobbies of mine. To answer your question, I guess it would depend on what I take away from the session. If I thought I was browsing content, I would probably say it’s under “break.” If I thought I was “learning” content, then I would put it under outside education.

To answer your second question, I generally schedule in the things I want to get done during the week at the beginning of the every week, and leave everything else blank. I usually try to front load the work so I have more and more blank spaces to retroactively fill in, for example if I eat out with my friends. Hope that helps!

Great blog post!!! Thanks for writing this! I was wondering if you had another blog/website since, on this website, your last post is from several months ago. If you stopped blogging altogether, may I ask why?

This I one of the most in-depth and relatable productivity guide I have ever read. I just have a few questions.
Why did you decide to switch to Sunrise Calendar?
Did you create a new calendar with Sunrise or is it just synced to your original Google calendar?
Now that you use Sunrise what do you use instead of Google tasks?
How do you anticipate the amount of time studying or homework will take up in your calendar?
If you go through your day and it doesn’t go as planned, what do you do on your calendar to account for that?
I look forward to using as much of this guide as possible to help me while I’m in, and after I graduate high school. Thank you for this amazing guide.

Sorry, let me caveat by saying I use Sunrise Calendar for mobile. My desktop calendar’s still mainly Google Calendar (I will update the guide soon to fix this mistake). I just thought the user interface for sunrise was cooler. Google Tasks is what mainly held me back. Sunrise syncs well with google calendar, and integrates with your pre-existing calendars.

For studying and homework, I try to get a good measuring stick based on the syllabus or asking past students. “How long did the homework take?” “How much am I suppose to study for a class?” I try to overcompensate the amount of time it takes to study, so I know I won’t go overtime with the subject I study. If my day doesn’t go as planned, I can always switch out to-do to a later time. That’s the kind of flexibility I give myself when I have empty spaces in my calendar.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was actually looking for an android calendar app and thought sunrise would be a good one. Seeing that you use it and that it works well together with Google calendar I will probably start using it.

When you manage your google tasks do you make multiple lists for each type of task or do you use the default task list (your name) for every task? When you talk about grouping <15-minute task together with google tasks and setting a time for that, how do you actually plan that into your calendar? Just one more question, if you are in charge of a club would you create a new calendar for that club or would you put the club activities on your name calendar?

When you manage your google tasks do you make multiple lists for each type of task or do you use the default task list (your name) for every task? When you talk about grouping <15-minute task together with google tasks and setting a time for that, how do you actually plan that into your calendar? Just one more question, if you are in charge of a club would you create a new calendar for that club or would you put the club activities on your name calendar?

I am making my way through this well-done post. It’s going to take me more than one sitting to get through it (which, I think, is part of the point–I need to pace myself and stay consistent with my other activities, don’t get sucked into a 2-hour diversion). I dislike the calendar idea, but I think I dislike disliking it more, so I’m going to try it (again!). This is a great essay about, um, time-management, I guess (but what makes it great is it’s more than just “time-management” in a holistic sense). Highly recommended and thanks for the devoting some precious time to this post JM. haha, I had this post sitting on a browser tab for about a month before I got around to (starting to) reading it! (What’s wrong with _that_ picture?)

Good morning James.
Just wanted to say thank you for this great blog post. I’m just starting to use this calendar system and for some reason has no one to discuss this with and get experiences description from.
And you came with this blog post. :)
Also I really appreciate how you proposed your help here. I’ll probably not actually use it, but this fact by itself is amazing.
This calendar system is simple and useful. Hope I’ll someday come with my own insights and bring them to you.

So James, when are you writing a book?! ;) Seems you have gotten quite the internet following. I am working on my doctorate and was looking for ways to amp up my productivity when I came across your blog (is it procrastinating if you are looking for productivity tips on Pinterest?)
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write this. It is more thorough and keenly tailored than anything else I’ve come across formally or informally. Hope you’re doing well, and thank you for the wonderful post. You’ve inspired me. A lot of listing and calendar stuff I was already doing, but I have begun time logging and am really excited about the great results I am seeing not just in school, but my life!

Since I’ve started writing things down, I’ve been able to get into the mindset (or at least trying to) of partitioning parts of my day into work time and play time and it’s been working wonderfully. No longer do I think “Ok, I’ll go study soon… for like.. 2 hours” but in reality just go to to the library and fuck around on Facebook. Having my goals for the day written and planned for absolutely makes a difference. I can FEEL myself working harder (I actually hope I’m not lying to myself here…).

Hi James! I just wanted to say, thank you for doing this amazing guide it helped me so much I’ve never imagined. I think the hardest thing to do for me is to keep doing “what my calendar tells me”. I guess i’m not used to this strict scheduled life. But still i find it the best way to improve my productivity on a daily basis. So again thank you for your help.

I am a stay-at-home mom, but I also am a learning coach form my daughter’s cyber school, a student earning a Bachelors online, a Girl Scout leader, the financial planner at home and more. With your advice I am able to create a schedule for school and home activities. Every day flows much better. Thank you.

Great article. Love the stuff about the distraction blocker. The best one for Windows I found was FocusMe (www.focusme.co). Of course I am biased but I still use the software everyday and cannot even thinking about using my computer without it.

Hi James, I had shared this post onto my Facebook when I graduated high school in 2012. I coincidentally found it again today as a college graduate. It is helping me a lot through the post-graduation slump where everything just becomes a blur.

Thanks again for putting together the post. Time to finally put together an electronic calendar.

Hello James!
First off, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your super colorful busy schedule to help us organizationally-challenged individuals. I have struggled immensely with time management and sticking to schedules for at least a decade or so. Now that I am in my my twenties, and in nursing school, I felt that I needed a more solid foundation for time management so I don’t fall apart at the seams.
Anyways, I digress. I wanted to tell you that I have scoured the internet for many years and have yet to find a more helpful and practical blog about time management and organization until I saw yours. You have no idea what this means to me and the countless others I have already directed to your blog. You are the best!! I wish you the best of luck in your personal and career endeavors.

James, I was so inspired by your guide I made a webapp for planning, allocating, and tracking your time really easily. It’s in beta right now, and called LiquidTime: https://liquidti.me. Let me know what you think!

I take some time to write and thank you for your input. As someone who cherishes organisation and optimisation I can only appreciate your work. It especially resonates now that I am back in higher education for a career change after years spent in the workforce and have been somewhat struggling to get into good studying habits. Thank you for your inspiring work and all the best for the future.

Hi James,
I am a teacher and a Cal Alum in Mendocino County. I wanted to let you know that one of my students showed me this post – I think it was on Quora – way back in 2012, it was a turning-point for him. After implementing your strategies he went from being a very bright but mediocre student to an academic powerhouse with one of the fullest social lives I have ever seen. He graduated top of his class, went to UCB on a scholarship and continues there today, doing brilliantly and winning awards. Since then I have shared your article with many of my independent study students and try to use some of your techniques myself. You have made life better. Thank you.
Best regards, Jane

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